Imagine that. The Southern Baptist Convention has higher qualifications for becoming a missionary than the Midwives Alliance of North America has for becoming a “midwife.”
According to Inquisitr:
Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard are rejected as missionaries by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and the International Mission Board (IMB) for lack of qualifications…
What qualifications are needed to become a missionary?
[pullquote align=”right” color=””]Why are the requirements for a missionary more rigorous than the requirements for a CPM?[/pullquote]
To be a funded missionary of the SBC and IMB requires a bachelor’s degree from an accredited university and between 20 – 30 graduate hours of designated courses, such as: Biblical Studies, Theology, Church History, Missions, Evangelism, Discipleship, Preaching, Interpersonal Relationships, etc.
Although Derick Dillard has an undergraduate degree in accounting, he has never taken a college-level religion course and has no graduate credit hours. Jill Duggar has never been to college at all. To qualify as the spouse of a Baptist missionary, she must complete at least 12 college credit hours by taking these courses at an accredited college…
There’s no shortage of people able to meet these qualifications:
churches. The SBC employees over 4,800 missionaries and 300 new missionaries were added just this year.
In contrast, Duggar Dillard has never been to college at all, but that hasn’t stopped her for earning the CPM, certified professional midwife credential. As a I wrote recently, CPMs aren’t real midwives, they’re counterfeit midwives.
The CPM is not a medical credential and it is a testament to its effectiveness as a public relations ploy that most Americans don’t realize it is a counterfeit midwifery degree. It is not recognized by the UK, the Netherlands, Canada or Australia because it doesn’t meet the international standards for midwifery education and training. Indeed, the US is the only country in the industrialized world that has a second class of counterfeit midwives in addition to real midwives (certified nurse midwives).
Imagine that you couldn’t be bothered (or couldn’t handle) the necessary preparation but wanted to masquerade as a midwife anyway. You could simply take a correspondence course, attend a few dozen deliveries outside the hospital, pay money for an exam and voila: you are a CPM. Actually, you don’t even have to complete even those minimal requirements. You can simply submit a “portfolio” of births that you have attended, pay the money and take the exam, and voila, you too are a CPM.
Indeed, the educational requirements for the CPM were “strengthened” back in 2012 to mandate a high school diploma.
That raises an important question. Why are the requirements for becoming a teacher of religion far more rigorous than the requirements for a midwifery credential which involves life or death decisions?
The answer is that the Southern Baptist Convention has quality standards for missionaries. Merely wanting to be a missionary isn’t enough. In contrast, the Midwives Alliance of North America has no safety or quality standards for their pretend credential. Their avowed aim is to allow any woman who wants to deliver babies to call herself a “midwife” regardless of what education she does or does not have.
The ultimate irony is that while trusting God is not enough to call yourself a missionary, “trusting birth” is deemed to be adquate for calling yourself a “midwife.”
